Sen. Durbin Asks Facebook CEO Zuckerberg If He Would Be Comfortable Providing the Name of the Hotel He Stayed in Last Night in Brilliant Privacy Question (VIDEO)

I HAVE TO GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE … DEMOCRAT SENATOR DURBIN NAILED ZUCKERBERG AND PROVIDED BRILLIANT CONTEXT TO THE FACEBOOK PRIVACY DILEMMA.

During yesterday’s Facebook hearing before a joint Senate committee, Democrat Senator Dick Durbin asked a very interesting set of questions that drew laughs but were at the heart of the user information sharing problem that Facebook faces. Durbin asked whether Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg would be comfortable in sharing the name of the hotel he stayed in last night. Or whether he would tell us who he privately messaged this week online. Zuckerberg responded with a no on both questions. Then Durbin nailed him with the zinger, “I think that might be what this is all about, your right to privacy, the limits of your right to privacy and how much you give away.”

“Mr. Zuckerberg, would you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed in last night?” Durbin asked at the joint session of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees.

Zuckerberg did not answer right away. After the awkward pause, Zuckerberg said, “Uh … no.”

The hearing room erupted in laughter and Zuckerberg himself smiled as if he, too, realized how Durbin just nailed him.

Durbin, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee continued, “If you have messaged anybody this week, would you share with us the names of the people you’ve messaged?

Zuckerberg replied, “Senator, no, I would probably not choose to do that publicly here.”

Said Durbin, “I think that might be what this is all about, your right to privacy, the limits of your right to privacy and how much you give away in modern America in the name of quote connecting people around the world.”

15,000 Government Emails Revealed in Affair Ashley Madison Website Leak, Including IRS, DHS & Obama White House (Update: Josh Duggar Said To Have Multiple Accounts)

WELL ISN’T THIS EMBARRASSING … 15,000 Government email accounts used to register accounts were hosted on government servers.

As reported at The Hill, 15,000 government emails were used to register accounts on the “want to have an affair on your spouse or significant other” website, Ashley Madison. According to reports, the 15,000 of the email addresses used to register accounts were hosted on government and military servers. The Department of Veterans Affairs is the largest, non-military federal user of Ashley Madison; however, also represented on the list includes emails that could be tied to multiple administration agencies, including the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, House, Senate and Obama White House. Hmm … isn’t that interesting.  Ashley Madison, whose tagline is “Life is Short, Have an Affair,” after the the hacking group called “Impact Team” might now be changing their motto to, hope you got screwed, because now you really are.

Well at least we know none of the .gov email accounts belong to Hillary, so she can avoid at least one scandal.

Thousands of clients using the affair-oriented Ashley Madison website listed email addresses registered to the White House, top federal agencies and military branches, a data dump by hackers revealed.

The detailed data, released Tuesday, will likely put Washington, D.C., on edge. The nation’s capital reportedly has the highest rate of membership for the site of any city.

Indeed, more than 15,000 of the email addresses used to register accounts were hosted on government and military servers.

Buried in the list are emails that could be tied to multiple administration agencies, including the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, as well as several tied to both the House and Senate.  

For a month, hackers using the name “Impact Team” have been holding hostage the dating profiles of those who registered on the site. The group threatened to publicly out the potential adulterers if the site’s owner, Avid Life Media, didn’t take down Ashley Madison, which uses the tagline, “Life is short. Have an affair.”

Security researchers said on Wednesday that they believe the data released following the hack at Ashley Madison is authentic.

“This dump appears to be legit,” said David Kennedy, CEO of information security company TrustedSec, which monitors cyber attacks, in a blog post. “Very, very legit.”

Notes on the Ashley-Madison dump, You can download the data here.

On Twitter, @t0x0 provided Salted Hash with a breakdown of these addresses. A brief example is below; the image contains a larger list of domains. A full list is available here.

Domain  Count
us.army.mil     6788
navy.mil        1665
usmc.mil        809
mail.mil        206
gimail.af.mil   127
va.gov  104
bop.gov 88
ky.gov  73
med.navy.mil    62
usarmy.mil      55
us.af.mil       54
usps.gov        52
uscg.mil        46
dhs.gov 45
whitehouse.gov  44
ssa.gov 42
usdoj.gov 11
irs.gov 6

UPDATE I: Family Values Activist Josh Duggar Had a Paid Ashley Madison Account.

Good grief, seriously? As if Josh didn’t have enough issues with inappropriately touching his sisters as a teen. How this? According to The Daily Mail, Josh Duggar revealed as having ‘paid almost $1,000 for multiple Ashley Madison accounts’ as 37 million would-be love-cheats are named by hackers who stole Ashley Madison accounts.

But data released online in the wake of the hack on Ashley Madison’s servers certainly seems to show otherwise. Someone using a credit card belonging to a Joshua J. Duggar, with a billing address that matches the home in Fayetteville, Arkansas owned by his grandmother Mary—a home that was consistently shown on their now-cancelled TV show, and in which Anna Duggar gave birth to her first child—paid a total of $986.76 for two different monthly Ashley Madison subscriptions from February of 2013 until May of 2015.

Family Values Activist Josh Duggar Had a Paid Ashley Madison Account

According to the data, Josh Duggar was paying Ashley Madison in order to find an extramarital partner for the following acts:

“Conventional Sex,” Experimenting with Sex Toys,” One-Night Stands,” “Open to Experimentation,” “Gentleness,” “Good With Your Hands,” Sensual Massage,” “Extended Foreplay/Teasing,” “Bubble Bath for 2,” “Likes to Give Oral Sex,” “Likes to Receive Oral Sex,” “Someone I Can Teach,” “Someone Who Can Teach Me,” “Kissing,” “Cuddling & Hugging,” “Sharing Fantasies,” “Sex Talk.”

HACK ATTACK: U.S. Says Office of Personnel Management Hacked … the Records & Info of 4 Million Federal Emplyees, China Suspected

The Office of Personnel Management has been hacked and the records of 4 million past and current federal employees has had their records breached. US officials suspect China was behind the cyber attack. It is being called one of the largest thefts of government data in history. In the video below it is being reported that any federal employees who were victims of identity theft will be notified and will receive free credit monitoring. Free? Its not free, the America tax payers will be paying for that service because the federal government could not properly allocate monies to cyber security. It was just last month that we learned the IRS had been hacked.

U.S. officials suspect that hackers in China stole the personal records of as many as four million people in one of the most far-reaching breaches of government computers.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing the breach, detected in April at the Office of Personnel Management. The agency essentially functions as the federal government’s human resources department, managing background checks, pension payments and job training across dozens of federal agencies.

Investigators suspect that hackers based in China are responsible for the attack, though the probe is continuing, according to people familiar with the matter. On Thursday, several U.S. officials described the breach as among the largest known thefts of government data in history.

It isn’t clear exactly what was stolen in the hack attack, but officials said the information can be used to facilitate identity theft or fraud. The Department of Homeland Security said it “concluded at the beginning of May” that the records had been taken.

At a Chinese Foreign Ministry briefing on Friday, ministry spokesman Hong Lei said, “Cyberattacks are anonymous, cross-border and hard to trace. If you keep using the words “maybe” or “perhaps” without making a thorough study, this is irresponsible and unscientific.” He said China opposes all forms of cyberattacks. “We hope the U.S. side will shed its suspicions.”

I hate to say it, maybe Hillary Clinton had the right idea by using a private server housed at her home to store her State Department government emails on as the cyber protections performed by the US government do not seem to work.

It Begins, Obamacare Enrollees Info Compromised … 400 Connecticut Health-Exchange Enrollees’ Information May Be Compromised

And so it begins … 400 Connecticut Obamacare health-exchange enrollees’ information may have been compromised. A backpack was recovered in Hartford, Connecticut that held “four notepads with personal information for approximately 400 individuals. The backpack also contained Access Health CT paperwork and it appears as though some of that personal information may be associated with Access Health CT accounts. According to the New Haven Register, Hartford Police spokesman Lt. Brian Foley said an officer responded at about 2:15 p.m. to 280 Trumbull St. to meet with an Access Health CT employee regarding an employee possibly taking customer’s personal information. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokesman Aaron Albright said in a statement, “This situation does not involve consumers who have used HealthCare.gov.” Of course those words are about as reputable as the Obamacare, Healthcare.gov website roll-out. These are exactly the concerns many individuals warned of with the use and potential abuse by counselors for the exchanges known as “navigators.”

The personal information of around 400 health-exchange enrollees may be compromised, according to a statement issued today by Access Health CT CEO Kevin Counihan.

The statement notes that a backpack was recovered in Hartford that held “four notepads with personal information for approximately 400 individuals. The backpack also contained Access Health CT paperwork and it appears as though some of that personal information may be associated with Access Health CT accounts. It is still unclear where the backpack came from, and we are working [with] the Hartford Police Department to investigate, and contact the individuals whose information may be compromised. … Let me be clear: we are sorry this happened. This is a very serious situation and we will hold the person or persons who are responsible to account.”

Kathleen Tallarita, the government and public affairs outreach manager for Access Health CT, told National Review Online by phone that the health exchange does not know yet whether identity theft has occurred,  but “we’re diligently looking into what’s happened.”

Statement from Access Health CT CEO Kevin Counihan:

“Earlier today, we received a report that an individual in Hartford discovered a backpack on Trumbull Street containing four notepads with personal information for approximately 400
individuals. The backpack also contained Access Health CT paperwork and it appears as though some of that personal information may be associated with Access Health CT accounts.

It is still unclear where the backpack came from, and we are working the Hartford Police Department to investigate, and contact the individuals whose information may be compromised.

Makes you wonder how many backpacks have made it out of these health-exchanges that were not found, doesn’t it?

WHAT!!! Upskirt Photos Not Illegal According to Massachusetts High Court

ARE YOU KIDDING ME … REMEMBER WHEN LAWS USED TO PROTECT OR PROVIDE JUSTICE FOR THE VICTIM?

How can it be that a man who took cellphone photos up the skirts of women riding the Boston subway did not violate state law?  Massachusetts highest court ruled the following on Wednesday, “A female passenger on a MBTA trolley who is wearing a skirt, dress, or the like covering these parts of her body is not a person who is ‘partially nude,’ no matter what is or is not underneath the skirt by way of underwear or other clothing.”  The Court overruled a lower court and stated that the State law “does not apply to photographing (or videotaping or electronically surveilling) persons who are fully clothed and, in particular, does not reach the type of upskirting that the defendant is charged with attempting to accomplish on the MBTA.” Unbelievable! What ever happened to intent? Hell, what ever happened to Justice?

Just curious, what would have happened if he was doing this on a play ground?

A man who took cellphone photos up the skirts of women riding the Boston subway did not violate state law because the women were not nude or partially nude, Massachusetts’ highest court ruled Wednesday.

The Supreme Judicial Court overruled a lower court that had upheld charges against Michael Robertson, who was arrested in August 2010 by transit police who set up a sting after getting reports that he was using his cellphone to take photos and video up female riders’ skirts and dresses.

The ruling immediately prompted top Beacon Hill lawmakers to pledge to update state law.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court’s justice is not only blind, it’s stupid as well.